Tag Archives: psychology

I have never met any street sign which encourages someone to DO something. Instead, most street signs ask someone NOT to do something. For instance, they ask pedestrians not to run fast or they ask drivers not to drive fast. However, at a school in Hong Kong, I finally met a different street sign designed…

In Berlin, Germany, I met a vending machine in a steel cage. Covering the machine with a cage surprised me because it was inside one of downtown subway stations. My friend told me the machine could be damaged at night by drunken people. I formed an impression that Germany was unsafe; juvenile vandalism, an action involving deliberate…

I used to order the same sandwich at the Subway in Toronto (turkey-breast on a six inch, honey oat bread with lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and black olives). Subway opened a store recently in my campus in Seoul. I ordered the same meat and the same bread. Then, I said to a server the same…

In cafes in Copenhagen, Denmark, customers are often asked to create their own meals by combining foods. I succeeded in this creative task in one cafe but did not in the other. Two cafes have slightly different menus. I enjoyed the meal in the Mad & Kaffes (Food & Coffee). Foods were divided into six categories…

At Quora, someone asked “Why do people exit the bus at the front door even when it’s not crowded?” It received seven answers. Habit. If a bus has two doors it is actually more efficient for passengers to exit by the back door as any new passengers enter through the front door. However, most…

Macau has many tourist spots including Senado Square and Ruins of St. Pauls. However, I enjoyed a shopping district at The Venetian Macau the most. As the name suggests, a man-made Italian city exists in the hotel. When I first entered this district, something unnatural grabbed my attention; canal is narrow, floor is shiny,…

Chinese government tries hard to reduce plastic waste. Recently, it banned plastic waste import. According to financial times, half of the UK plastic waste need to find alternative places desperately. In contrast, Chinese people seem to overuse plastics. In Shenzhen, for instance, plates are often wrapped with plastic packages. We should tear it down…

Lee, Younjoon and Jaewoo Joo (2016), “How a Design Executive Officer Can Craft an Organizational Culture,” Design Management Journal, 10 (1), 50-61. … This company (Woowa Brothers (woowa is Korean for “elegance”) developed a mobile application (app) for food delivery services in 2010. Interestingly, the CEO of this company was trained as a designer and…

We want to voluntarily participate in recycling but do so only when it is easy. Recently, I met two bin boxes next to each other at a university in Seoul. Unfortunately, their colors and names made me confused: the left one had a blue cover and a green panel saying “recycled” and the right one had…

Stellan Ohlsson, Professor in Psychology at University of Illinois at Chicago visited COGENG (Cognitive Engineering Lab) at SKKU and gave a speech on skill acquisition. He introduced his own work of learning from errors in which he argues that, in order to acquire or specializes in a certain skill (e.g., changing a lane to the left while…

Jaewoo teaches and writes in the areas of design thinking, new product development, and behavioral economics. He is an associate professor of marketing and participating professor of experience design at Kookmin University.